Outcome-Based Innovations

One of the common breakdowns of innovations represents the incremental, radical and general purpose types of innovation. Incremental innovation represents more of a continual improvement when an existing product, process, service or solution is improved creatively. Radical innovation represents the replacement of an existing solution with a significantly different approach (e.g., a transistor replacing vacuum tubes in electronics or email replacing conventional mail). A radical innovation causes a disruption in the current way of doing things. General purpose innovation describes significant innovations that fundamentally change the way of thinking and doing. Such innovations have wide impact, scope of improvement and a broader range of uses (e.g., the discovery of electricity or Einstein’s theory of relativity).